Is .NET giving me the wrong week number for Dec. 29th 2008?

Question

According to the official (gregorian) calendar, the week number for 29/12/2008 is 1, because after the last day of week 52 (i.e. 28/12) there are three or less days left in

Answer 1

@Conrad is correct. The .NET implementation of DateTime and the GregorianCalendar don't implement/follow the full ISO 8601 spec. That being said, they spec is extremely detailed and non-trivial to implement fully, at least for the parsing side of things.

Some more information is available at the following sites:

• http://www.iso.org/iso/en/prods-services/popstds/datesandtime.html
• http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-datetime
• http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-time.html
• http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/iso8601.html
• http://hydracen.com/dx/iso8601.htm
• http://www.probabilityof.com/ISO8601.shtml
• http://www.mcs.vuw.ac.nz/technical/software/SGML/doc/iso8601/ISO8601.html

Simply put:

A week is identified by its number in a given year and begins with a Monday. The first week of a year is the one which includes the first Thursday, or equivalently the one which includes January 4.

Here is part of the code I use for properly handling ISO 8601 dates:

    #region FirstWeekOfYear
    /// <summary>
    /// Gets the first week of the year.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="year">The year to retrieve the first week of.</param>
    /// <returns>A <see cref="DateTime"/>representing the start of the first
    /// week of the year.</returns>
    /// <remarks>
    /// Week 01 of a year is per definition the first week that has the Thursday 
    /// in this year, which is equivalent to the week that contains the fourth
    /// day of January. In other words, the first week of a new year is the week
    /// that has the majority of its days in the new year. Week 01 might also 
    /// contain days from the previous year and the week before week 01 of a year
    /// is the last week (52 or 53) of the previous year even if it contains days 
    /// from the new year.
    /// A week starts with Monday (day 1) and ends with Sunday (day 7). 
    /// </remarks>
    private static DateTime FirstWeekOfYear(int year)
    {
        int dayNumber;

        // Get the date that represents the fourth day of January for the given year.
        DateTime date = new DateTime(year, 1, 4, 0, 0, 0, DateTimeKind.Utc);

        // A week starts with Monday (day 1) and ends with Sunday (day 7).
        // Since DayOfWeek.Sunday = 0, translate it to 7. All of the other values
        // are correct since DayOfWeek.Monday = 1.
        if (date.DayOfWeek == DayOfWeek.Sunday)
        {
            dayNumber = 7;
        }
        else
        {
            dayNumber = (int)date.DayOfWeek;
        }

        // Since the week starts with Monday, figure out what day that 
        // Monday falls on.
        return date.AddDays(1 - dayNumber);
    }

    #endregion

    #region GetIsoDate
    /// <summary>
    /// Gets the ISO date for the specified <see cref="DateTime"/>.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="date">The <see cref="DateTime"/> for which the ISO date
    /// should be calculated.</param>
    /// <returns>An <see cref="Int32"/> representing the ISO date.</returns>
    private static int GetIsoDate(DateTime date)
    {
        DateTime firstWeek;
        int year = date.Year;

        // If we are near the end of the year, then we need to calculate
        // what next year's first week should be.
        if (date >= new DateTime(year, 12, 29))
        {
            if (date == DateTime.MaxValue)
            {
                firstWeek = FirstWeekOfYear(year);
            }
            else
            {
                firstWeek = FirstWeekOfYear(year + 1);
            }

            // If the current date is less than next years first week, then
            // we are still in the last month of the current year; otherwise
            // change to next year.
            if (date < firstWeek)
            {
                firstWeek = FirstWeekOfYear(year);
            }
            else
            {
                year++;
            }
        }
        else
        {
            // We aren't near the end of the year, so make sure
            // we're not near the beginning.
            firstWeek = FirstWeekOfYear(year);

            // If the current date is less than the current years
            // first week, then we are in the last month of the
            // previous year.
            if (date < firstWeek)
            {
                if (date == DateTime.MinValue)
                {
                    firstWeek = FirstWeekOfYear(year);
                }
                else
                {
                    firstWeek = FirstWeekOfYear(--year);
                }
            }
        }

        // return the ISO date as a numeric value, so it makes it
        // easier to get the year and the week.
        return (year * 100) + ((date - firstWeek).Days / 7 + 1);
    }

    #endregion

    #region Week
    /// <summary>
    /// Gets the week component of the date represented by this instance.
    /// </summary>
    /// <value>The week, between 1 and 53.</value>
    public int Week
    {
        get
        {
            return this.isoDate % 100;
        }
    }
    #endregion

    #region Year
    /// <summary>
    /// Gets the year component of the date represented by this instance.
    /// </summary>
    /// <value>The year, between 1 and 9999.</value>
    public int Year
    {
        get
        {
            return this.isoDate / 100;
        }
    }
    #endregion